Comandante Ismael*

By: Elio Henríquez

Integrantes del EZLN en imagen de archivo. Foto Víctor Camacho

San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

A commander of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), Ismael (Miguel López Hernández), died early Tuesday morning, different sources reported. He died at 4:00 am, after a long battle against liver cancer that he had suffered for a couple of years and for which he was under medical treatment, they explained.

The Zapatista commander, a native of the Hermenegildo Galeana community, official municipality of Ocosingo, in the Lacandón Jungle, was currently the one responsible for the EZLN’s Caracol III, with headquarters in the community of La Garrucha, Francisco Gómez Zapatista [Autonomous] Municipality in rebellion, located in the official municipality of Ocosingo, they mentioned.

Ismael, was one of the first indigenous people of the zone who joined the EZLN —founded on November 17, 1983 in the Lacandón Jungle—, and was also a contemporary of Comandantes Maxo, Raúl and Tacho, among others.

According to the sources consulted, his wife and 8 children, the oldest 28 and the youngest 12, survive him.

Until this Tuesday, the EZLN had not officially released news about the death of Ismael, who also struggled for the fulfillment of the San Andrés Accords signed February 16, 1997 by the Mexican government and the Zapatistas.

*The photo was taken when Comandante Ismael participated in the 2001 March of the Color of the Earth.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Tuesday, January 20, 2021

https://www.jornada.com.mx/notas/2021/01/19/estados/fallece-el-comandante-zapatista-ismael/

Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee